Not just the artwork, but also the artists thoughts about the work, news about merchandise, and your chance to COMMENT ON IT ALL! Visit the website: http://creativeodditiesstudios.bigcartel.com you sick freaks!

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Creative Oddities Studios is Moving

This has been in the works for a few months now.

For the last couple of years, it seems that simplification has been a theme in my life. Getting back to basics, to what is important. It started at home, with my wife and I divesting ourselves of much of our material baggage. We had a lot of very nice things that we realized that while nice to have we didn't get much use out of; books we have read once and never again, movies that were rarely watched, clothes we didn't wear, etc. It was like owning a museum full of artifacts from our past. So, we purged it all, keeping only that which we felt was meaningful to us. We still love books and movies, but we just don't see the necessity of owning a library full of them.

A library stocked with books we love and continue to read repeatedly, that is another matter.

The Website, creativeodditiesstudios.com, started out almost a decade ago as this clunky little adventure. I built the site while learning HTML. Initially, it was exclusively for the display of original works of art. Over the years, I discovered different ways to merchandise my work, and added sections to the site reflecting these new offerings. I learned about tools for tracking traffic and marketing the site. The site graphics improved, and I offered ever-more options for patrons of the site; various blogs, comic strips, and HTML-based game, and so on.

With each addition, the site became more elaborate and unwieldy. I found myself drawing from four or five different production companies to offer the products I wanted. This meant that every new piece of art would have to be formatted a dozen different ways and require hours of uploading and coding. That was the worst of it, the coding of the site. It simply became tedious. It wasn't fun anymore.

A few months ago, I started thinking about getting back to basics, simply offering original works of art and prints, with the occasional piece of merchandise on a limited-run basis. This was going to require re-coding the site accordingly, dropping many of the sections that are currently in place, and (as I wanted to modernize the look and functionality of the site) learn a new coding language or purchase new site-building software.

I ran across Big Cartel purely by accident. For the same money that I was spending on creativeodditiesstudios.com, I could easily build a new site that was exactly what I wanted; simple, focused, and modern. It only meant giving-up the domain name, which in my mind is a small sacrifice. So, Creative Oddities Studios is moving. You can now find my art and offerings at http://creativeodditiesstudios.bigcartel.com. The old site will be taken down in early October. The various producers of products will still be utilized; Cafe Press, Zazzle, etc, but those products will generally be found on the shop pages for those particular venues and not offered on the new site. I'll be using this blog, the Facebook page, and other social media sites to display new work.